and stays with him as she believes she can help him combat and contain his rage but Junior soon realises why his aunt is constantly bruised and tries to stop the violence by telling people about the abuse but this only makes matters worse. Matthew becomes irrationally jealous of Carmel's friendship with Dr. David Samuels (Christopher Reich), and during a family meal, he turns violent again and attempting to protect Carmel, Junior stabs Matthew with a kitchen knife and he is rushed to hospital, where he tries to convince Carmel that he has changed. She allows him to come home and tries to get him professional help but Matthew refuses, appalled by the idea and begins smashing up the house and threatening Carmel with more violence. Finally realising that she cannot help Matthew, Carmel ends their relationship. She throws Matthew out and he leaves Walford in July 1989. The following month, Carmel's father dies, so she leaves Walford with Junior and Aisha to look after her mother. Her last appearance is in August 1989. Character creation In July 1984, before EastEnders went to air, the show's creators, Tony Holland and Julia Smith, attended an opening evening at the Anna Scher Theatre School in North London, in order to find actors for roles in their upcoming serial. According to Holland and Smith, Anna Scher's school was unlike many other drama schools, where students were "ironed out", all looking and sounding the same. At Anna Scher's school, students' natural personalities and accents were encouraged, "her students aren't taught how to act, they're helped to dig inside themselves and be." In Holland and Smith's own words, this was "just the sort of non-acting that [EastEnders] was looking for". Often, former students who were already working in the acting profession attended Scher's classes, and on the night Holland and Smith attended, actress Judith Jacob performed. Holland and Smith described Jacob as "an old friend", as they had previously worked with her on their medical drama Angels, where Jacob had played nurse Beverley Slater between 1979 and 1981. Following the end of the class, Holland and Smith concluded that Judith Jacob "had been as good as ever", but that "there wasn't really a part for her" in the original character line-up. However, in 1986, a year after the soap had first aired, Jacob was recruited by Julia Smith and offered a part in the serial,